


A Twitch Upon the Thread

by Argyle



Category: The Sandman (Comics)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-07-16
Updated: 2006-07-16
Packaged: 2018-02-20 11:07:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2426507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Argyle/pseuds/Argyle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A man's yesterday may never be like his morrow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Twitch Upon the Thread

Hob Galding told himself this: it’s only out of habit.

When a man does a thing time and again for a number of years, it’s to be expected that he might do so once more, even after the veins of incentive have at last been bled dry. He’d become used to the meeting. It was at first something of a bet he had wagered with himself, a bet which Lord Dream had met with nothing if not a curl of his lip. That damned gleam in his eye was still there a century later.

An appointment, then. He saw nothing wrong with keeping his word as a gentleman. There were times when he had traveled quite a long distance to ensure his own attendance, setting out from the Klondike or Ceylon or Borneo and making his way back to England as though carried on the back of the wind. _And what if the tavern is no longer there_ , he wondered, idly, in the spring of 1883. From time to time, he had considered making arrangements to buy the White Horse, managing it with the watchful eye of one who knows how it has been, and how it could be. He never followed through with the notion, but always there remained the niggling threat of change.

Hob had not expected his friend to meet him the last time, and so it came to be that his expectation was overturned. Even then, he could not disguise the spectre of relief which hung round the corner of every word he spoke that evening.

Hob did not expect to meet his friend now.

In the intervening decades, the world had once again become rougher. There were no rocket packs, or flying automobiles. Boundaries were less well defined. The streets were crowded with the lost and the losing. It didn’t rain as much as it used to; it rained more. Everyone was busy. Why indeed would Another be any different?

And of course there was the matter of the funeral.

“Habit.” Hob said it out loud. “Nothing more.”

But then again, no: the night was cool, and there was only so much heat to be had from rubbing his hands together. He felt a pinch in his stomach. A shiver circuited up his spine. He stood before the tavern, and the sight of it was as familiar as only dreams can be.

The aging barman nodded at him, and he ordered bitter, for there was no scotch.

Hob waited, watched.

The same old ghosts lined the walls, lounged in booths, sipped from tankards. They glinted fleetingly in the hissing fluorescent light; they smiled, and sang, and shat. Here and there were snatches of speech which Hob recognized.

_So what have you been doing for the last hundred years?_

“Nothing of importance,” he heard himself reply.

_Really?_

And of course he was quite alone.

He wasn’t disappointed.

He left without finishing his drink; the night took him as it always did, and later, if he dreamt, he did not remember.


End file.
